During her last Tory conference speech, Penny Mordaunt told her audience: ‘If you remember nothing else from what I have said today remember this – stand up and fight.’
This serial Conservative leadership candidate got her way on that at least, for it was the only point from her address that stuck in anyone’s mind.
Mainly that was because she used the phrase, or near-variants, almost 20 times, including in a disastrously over-extended closing crescendo that ran as follows:
‘Stand up and fight. Because when you stand up and fight, the person beside you stands up and fights. And when our party stands up and fights, the nation stands up and fights. And when our nation stands up and fights, other nations stand up and fight.’
By this point you presumed that a world war had probably started over whatever it was we were supposed to be fighting for.
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